I want to upgrade from 10.5 to 10.6. My optical drive does not work on my mini Mac. I have tried to remote install off of the PC. That is not working, both computers have DVD sharing on. I bought an external optical drive to install that way and about half way through it comes up missing firmware or something. I also tried using an USB flash drive but I cannot find disk utilities.

The optical drive i bought is a lacie and i did not realize that is says it is for pc only. I am open to returning it if you have a better suggestion. I tried pushing the command and space bar and it opens the hard drive no place to type anything.

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i read on a different forum that you can us a usb drive to install snow leopard, but you need to use disk utilities to format the usb drive

This is also my second snow leopard disk. I have called apple a few times on doing a remote install and no go. That is when I decided to buy and external optical drive. I was going to buy an apple superdrive but I read that someone else was trying to do the same thing and they called apple and found out that the superdrive is not supported until lion.

I tried pushing the command and space bar and it opens the hard drive no place to type anything.[COLOR="#808080"]

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Pressing Command & the spacebar should open Spotlight Search for you. Alternatively, clicking the magnifying glass icon in the top right of your menu bar will activate Spotlight Search.

Have you found your Disk Utilites app? I understand you're not in a position to use it at the moment, but if it's not where it should be, within the Utilities folder of your Apps folder, it seems indicative that there may also be other problems or snags to your trying to upgrade.

FWIW, Apple told me in the past (trying to upgrade to SL from Leopard with an iMac with defective display & secondary monitor) that upgrading using a peripheral wasn't possible. That may have changed since they stopped including ODDs, but yes, making a USB bootloader sounds like your best bet. Best wishes.